Star Trek TOS Door Chime minor modification

Hey, guys... I just wanted to share with you a very minor mod I did to the Think Geek Star Trek TOS Door Chime/Intercom Panel.

I got it from Think Geek about a week ago, and I thought it was pretty good. But of course, after about 5 minutes, it was already taken apart. The one thing that bothered me was the gold plastic grille where the speaker is. I thought I could cut it out and use some of the TOS-style grille cloth to replace it. So I did just that. Got out the Dremel and cut out the window for the grille. Got a piece of Fender grille cloth, and lightly painted it gold, as to retain the color of the original plastic piece that was there. I took a thin sheet of plexi and drilled holes for the sound to escape, and glued that to the back of the grille cloth. (It wasn't rigid enough on its own; it needed some sort of backing.

The other thing I wasn't too crazy about was the sky blue housing around the speaker. While the shiny red main housing looks pretty good, that pale blue just looked too plastic to me. So I used a rattle can of Duplicolor blue metallic to cover that up. Again, I wanted to maintain something of the original color scheme, so I stuck with blue, but just not as light.

Got everything together, and there you have it. I've included a few pics. Thank you for looking! :thumbsup

22 Stars, if you're thinking about doing it, this may help-- it's the template I made for the thin sheet of plexi that I put behind the grille cloth. I printed this out, laid it in the inside of the speaker housing (the blue plastic piece) and did a little more trimming to ensure a proper fit. (As it says on the diagram, the cutouts on the four corners are approximate locations.) I then just traced the paper template onto the plexi and cut. It's not perfect, but it'll get you going in the right direction.

Incidentally, when you cut out the original grille, you're going to lose 1 (or is it 2?) of the screw holes that keep the larger of the two circuit boards in place. But it still seemed to stay just fine, despite the fewer connection points.

I also took a thin piece of plexi and made a ring to go around the speaker itself, to act as a bit of a resonance chamber. Not that the speaker needs it for volume-- it's pretty * loud to begin with. But I just wanted to make sure I rounded out the sound a bit.